Cinema Beyond the Cinema
Vernacular film is a broad and fascinating category that encompasses all the films made outside the realms of commercial entertainment and avant-garde art. The term is borrowed from concepts like “vernacular architecture”—buildings made for everyday use by local builders, not professional architects. Similarly, vernacular films are the “everyday” motion pictures of our culture, created for practical, personal, or institutional purposes rather than for theatrical exhibition. They are the vast, largely unseen ocean of film that surrounds the islands of mainstream and art cinema.
These films were never intended to be viewed as art. Their value was functional, ephemeral, and specific to their original context. However, for film historians, archivists, and artists, they are a treasure trove of invaluable cultural information.
The Scope of Vernacular Film
The category of vernacular film is incredibly diverse and includes a wide range of materials:
- Home Movies: Amateur footage of family vacations, birthdays, and daily life, shot on 8mm, Super 8, or early video formats.
- Industrial and Promotional Films: Films produced by corporations to train employees, advertise products, or document manufacturing processes.
- Educational Films: Films made for classroom use, covering topics from science and history to social etiquette and hygiene.
- Government and Military Films: Training films, public service announcements, propaganda, and archival footage of historical events.
- Scientific and Medical Films: Recordings of experiments, surgical procedures, or natural phenomena.
Cultural and Artistic Importance
In recent decades, there has been a growing appreciation for the importance of vernacular films. They serve as an unparalleled historical record, offering an unfiltered, unintentional glimpse into the social norms, fashions, technologies, and lost landscapes of the past. Home movies, in particular, provide a democratic counter-narrative to the official histories presented in mainstream media.
Furthermore, vernacular footage has become a vital raw material for contemporary artists and documentary filmmakers. The practice of creating found footage films involves taking these pre-existing, “orphaned” films and re-editing or re-contextualizing them to create new works of art. Filmmakers like Bill Morrison (Decasia) and Péter Forgács use decaying vernacular films to create haunting, poetic meditations on memory, history, and the physical nature of the film medium itself.